All's Fair in Love and War and Death
by SixThings
Summary: Elizabeth discovered she had a certain sensitivity even though it came from grief. A chance meeting leads her to meet Mr. Darcy, and they fall in love. But circumstances force them apart, drastic circumstances. Theirs is a love stronger than death. Excerpt only, pulled for publication.
1. Introduction

Introduction

It started when she was a little girl. Elizabeth always sat at the _end_ of the Bennet pew. The Bennets had one of the most prominent pews at St. Alban's Church in Meryton because they were one of the first families.

St. Alban's was an old stone church. It had been rebuilt in the seventeenth century out of local stone, heavy and ugly, and was in want of repair. There were few windows in those thick stone walls, and yet at the end of the Bennet pew there was a narrow window in the nave wall on the south side of the church. That window was one of only three which looked out over the graveyard. It was one of the few that had yet to have some rich subscriber donate a great deal of money so that a stained glass window could be installed in it for the glory of God and in remembrance of some family member.

Mrs. Bennet hated to sit at the far end and to look over the graveyard; she sat on the inner aisle. It allowed her to keep an eye on the comings and goings of her neighbors. Not that there was much change to observe as everyone sat in the same place, and Reverend White gave the same sort of sermon, week after week after week at St. Alban's.

Mr. Bennet dutifully sat next to his wife. Jane (the oldest daughter) being equally dutiful, sat next to her parents. Mary never minded going to church, sitting on those hard wooden pews and listening to sermons, at least not to ever complain about it—she came next. And once Catherine and Lydia were old enough to leave the nursery and be brought to church, well, they needed a lot of attention so they had to suffer sitting with Mrs. Bennet or Nanny Pickens, who had been their nursemaid until she died when Lydia was seven.

Somehow, Elizabeth had been left to her own devices when it came to her church attendance, sitting at the _end_ of the pew. The fact that she did not object to sitting on the end by the window near the graveyard was welcomed by everyone.

Elizabeth had discovered at a young age that there was a colony of crows which lived in the oak and yew trees out there. Uncle Phillips had once corrected Elizabeth about her choice of words when she mentioned that there was a _colony_ there in the graveyard. He said it was to be called a 'murder' of crows.

She thought that was too coarse of a phrase, it did not describe them fairly. She saw them going out in twos together, _courting_ almost _,_ she believed. Elizabeth imagined she saw them as if dancing as they moved about the graveyard in pursuit of worms to eat, or seeking twigs for nests, or pursuing whatever activities they did each day.

And sitting on the end of that pew and watching the ministrations of the crows was a far better use of her time than listening to old Reverend White's sermons about sin.


	2. Chapter One

Dedication:

To WadeH: because we've discussed dead Darcy stories.

To Myship: because you always help me find the right word.

* * *

Chapter One

 _October 5, 1810_

It was a cold and blustery Sunday, just after Michaelmas. Mr. Bennet set off on foot for Longbourn once services were over. The Longbourn carriage was to meet them at Mrs. Phillips' house, for their Aunt Phillips lived in town and Mrs. Bennet wished to call upon her sister.

Mrs. Phillips had, all told, an extremely fine house in town. It was not an estate. Mr. Phillips was a country attorney (their aunt had not done as well as Mrs. Bennet by marrying a gentleman) but _still_ , having family so close was of comfort to Mrs. Bennet.

The mother of five's face was flushed and excessively red that blustery day as she led her troop of daughters down the graveyard path towards Townsend Lane where Mrs. Phillips lived. Mrs. Bennet often remarked how she hated having to walk that particular pathway. She wished for a _different_ way to get to her sister's house though she would never go so far as to take the main path out of church. That involved walking up to the High Street, around to Church Lane and _then_ to Townsend—a path that was twice the distance to her poor tired feet, and aching, over-taxed heart.

Mrs. Bennet thought they ought to put in a proper path in the churchyard, one which carried on straight, over to the edge of the property (in between the graves) and that they should cut down the line of yew trees that ran along the eastern side of the churchyard as well. Elizabeth had always been horrified at the idea of cutting those trees down because she knew that crows nested in those trees.

Elizabeth followed her family, though with slower footsteps. She turned and saw that most of the crows were not in attendance in the graveyard. It was as if they knew that if they appeared, Mrs. Bennet would yell at them and wave her stick about.

In the last year (since the spring), Mrs. Bennet had affected to use a walking stick to lean upon. It had become a fashion accessory among the rich, and her daughters weren't sure if she had purchased it because it was _fashionable,_ or because she actually needed its assistance in walking. But Mrs. Bennet often waved it about. The crows seemed to remember her; they would note she was coming and fly out of her way.

But Elizabeth tarried behind her family. Catherine and Lydia ran ahead, out of sight, wishing to discover what sorts of visitors Aunt Phillips might have waiting for them, while Jane and Mary dutifully walked beside their mother.

A _caw_ caught Elizabeth's attention, and she turned to see that there was a small group of crows in the largest of the oak trees in the graveyard, ones which had not fled, despite Mrs. Bennet's presence. Elizabeth was surprised that there was an odd number of them—there were _five_ of them.

There was one odd little gentlemen crow. Elizabeth was not sure why she thought it was a _gentleman_ crow, she just felt that it _was,_ as she stopped and paused to look at him. She wondered _where has your mate got to?_ With so many years of observation of her little friends, Elizabeth knew that they stayed true to each other for life, so she was surprised that this one did not have a companion with him. He cocked his head there on his perch up on the oak branch as he peered down at her.

A great cry resounded in the graveyard, and it was not the call of the crows. It was Mary calling out in a garbled fashion, and it was Jane calling "Mamma!" Elizabeth looked towards the yew fence and saw her sisters bending over a form on the ground: her mother's form. She took off running to that trio of figures. Jane was kneeling on the ground; Mary was bent at the waist and staring at a moving form on the ground.

Her mother lay on her side as though she had fallen forward; the stick had not done its job to keep her on her feet. And despite fears that she had been already been taken from this earth, she was breathing though the sound coming from her lungs was odd and distorted. Mrs. Bennet was twitching, but her eyes were open.

"I'll run for Mr. Jones," said Elizabeth. "Mary,can you run to the Phillips' house for help?" Mary seemed unable to answer. Lizzy moved and pulled Mary to her in a rough embrace then began to drag her to the graveyard gate; they needed to head in the same direction.

"Mary!" she cried again. "You need to fetch Uncle Phillips!" Elizabeth opened the half-gate at the graveyard's edge between that line of yew trees and pulled her sister after her.

* * *

Mrs. Bennet lay in her sickbed for three days, unable to move or respond, and thankfully—due to Mr. Jones' administrations and laudanum—asleep. She was mostly attended by Mrs. Hill, the housekeeper, with daily visits from Mr. Jones to determine her progress (or rather her deterioration). It seemed no one in Meryton ever took her complaints about those heart palpitations seriously, but apparently she _had_ been ill.

Mr. Bennet did not visit but kept to his bookroom asking for updates. He did not seem inclined to see his lady wife out of this world. Jane and Elizabeth took turns sitting with their mother. Mrs. Hill was there out of a sense of obligation for her mistress, but the two oldest were there out of a new-found sense of love for that small, lace-capped figure in the bed. She was, after all, the mother who had given birth to them, raised them as well as she could, was devoted to them in the way most mothers are, but would be parting from them in short order. They were under no expectations that Mrs. Bennet would sit up from the bed and demand tea. Everyone knew that she would pass from this world to the next.

Mary seemed to have quite a difficult time with her mother lying insensible and spiritless, yet not having gone on. Mary could not sit with her mother. She could not view that frail figure, for Mrs. Bennet had not really been that kind to her plain middle daughter. Mary spent most of her time playing mournful tunes on the pianoforte. Elizabeth suggested once to her that perhaps she try playing something different, to raise her spirits. But Mary said it was what she needed to do, so Elizabeth left her to it.

Catherine and Lydia seemed to have no concept or understanding of what losing their mother would mean. Lydia, in particular, was a bundle of emotion and energy. A thirteen year old could only understand the world in her terms, how it affected _her_. The person who indulged her every whim no longer existed, and Lydia gave way to hysterics and tears. Not for the first time did a number of people in that household wish there had been a governess, or that the old nursery-maid, Miss Pickens, had lived to see a few more years that there might be another hand to take charge of that loud and hysterical girl.

Aunt Phillips came every day. The older sisters hoped that their aunt might help with Lydia, but their aunt wished to have a parting sit with her sister and did not wish to deal with the tantrums of a thirteen year old. By the second day the antics and hysterics from Lydia had begun to influence Catherine. It riled up Kitty (who had seemed quiet and introspective before), but who now seemed to feel left out and lost.

The noise level was such that by the afternoon of the third day, Elizabeth dragged her two youngest sisters out of doors to give the household some relief. She took her two sisters out for a walk, bullying and badgering them to seek exercise with her, leaving Aunt Phillips, Jane, and Mrs. Hill at her mother's side. It was another cold and blustery day, quite like the day when Mrs. Bennet had collapsed in the graveyard.

Twilight seemed to set upon them earlier than Elizabeth expected as they finished their walk and headed back to Longbourn. She had achieved her purpose with the walk, however. Lydia had quite the peace to speak when they had left, and she had talked nonstop; Catherine had added her own words whenever she could, which was whenever Lydia had stopped to draw breath. The length of the walk meant that eventually the pair needed to save their breath for the trip home.

At the end, all three were quiet as they crept back towards Longbourn in the diminishing light of the afternoon. Catherine, in particular, did not care to be out when it was dark, and had long had a fear of dark places, something which Lydia used to frequently tease her about.

Longbourn was a small estate; Mr. Bennet only saw about two thousand a year from it. There was a small wood, Hollybush Woods, in one corner of it, the north-west corner. There it spilled over into the next property to the north, Wheaton, which belonged to the Meeks. There was also a brook, a river actually, which ran through the woods.

It had often been a favorite place for Elizabeth to stroll through, particularly in the summer and on fine days, though blustery and cold autumn days did not make it the best destination. But she had dragged two protesting sisters and their vociferous, rambunctious, and selfish selves in that direction to give her mother's final days or hours a certain peace.

The grayness of the day added to the darkness of the woods though it was not so very dark that afternoon, however it _was_ autumn, _and_ late afternoon, and the light _was_ failing. She noticed a shift in her sisters' behavior as they seemed to draw closer to each other and closer to her.

"Lizzy, we need to hurry home," insisted Kitty.

"We should," agreed Elizabeth. "I have left Jane to care for Mamma for too long."

The two younger sisters held hands and moved on ahead of Elizabeth like mice scurrying in a room with foreknowledge of a cat nearby.

There was a sound, a rustling, that made Elizabeth stop and look up into the trees. They weren't so very dense just there, and she saw a crow. She thought it odd that she should see just _one_ in the forest. She also could not recall seeing them in this part of the woods before. It let out a loud _caw_ as if speaking to her, and cocked its head with meaning. It fluttered its wings, cawed again, and then flew back the way she had come.

There was something that compelled Elizabeth to turn around and watch it. The crow didn't exactly fly, but flew and hopped in a single motion as it moved back into the woods, back into the darkness on that gray afternoon under the canopy of the trees. Elizabeth's steps matched its hops as she followed it. She did not think that they had retreated that far, but it stopped with its claws firmly grasped around a branch, and it let out a long series of sounds, harsh calls as if to say "we have come far enough and you need to take in your surroundings."

She turned to look. There did not seem to be anything special or particular about where she stood, it was not a special place to her, there was nothing singular or peculiar about where the crow had led her.

Elizabeth looked back down the path and noted that Catherine and Lydia were coming towards her. She wondered if something had spooked Kitty that she needed a guiding arm around her waist to get her home. No doubt, Lydia had teased her too much, and Kitty was storming back up the path to seek Elizabeth's far more reassuring company.

But as she watched those two female figures coming towards her, Elizabeth also realized that she had strayed from the path. Her feet were no longer on any sort of packed dirt, and she stood on a bed of fallen leaves. She also noted that there was not the usual disparity of height between the two figures, for Lydia (despite being the youngest sister and only thirteen) had suddenly shot up just that summer, and was taller than all of her sisters. It was something she found great joy in, particularly since she was taller than her next older sister, Catherine, whom she often cajoled and scolded to do her bidding even though Kitty was two years older.

Elizabeth's eyes looked again at those figures, and then she realized that it was _Jane,_ and though Elizabeth couldn't believe her eyes, it was her _mother. H_ er heart leapt at that sight. She thought that despite everyone's fears, and Mr. Jones' pronouncements, and all of Aunt Phillips' assurances that Mrs. Bennet's last hours were upon them, _here_ was her mother apparently risen from her sick bed to take a restorative stroll on Jane's arm. They were walking together in the woods.

But then logic intruded. _Meaning_. Her mother had never been one for walks; Jane hardly less so. Jane most often strolled about only in the formal Longbourn gardens. She would not be one to walk a half mile out to this point in the Hollybush Woods, and return home as Elizabeth did most days (and as she had just cajoled her two youngest sisters to do). Elizabeth's heart constricted after that giant leap of joy as she considered _was that truly Jane and her mother walking towards her?_

Somehow, she could not keep her eyes off of Jane, her _form_ in particular, as the pair grew closer. Elizabeth looked at the face and the clothes, and she realized that she did not recognize her sister's dress, it looked out of place. The closer the figure drew, the more Elizabeth looked at the face, and the more she realized that this was an older version of Jane. An aged one. This figure looked like how Jane might look in five years, and not as she currently did as a woman who was on the verge of turning twenty. Mrs. Bennet looked exactly as Mrs. Bennet always did, from her lace cap down to her choice of clothes, predictable particularly because of that lace collar which was the one Aunt Gardiner had given her last Christmas.

The pair drew near her, then passed on the road in front of Elizabeth. It was only as they walked by, walked by without acknowledging her, and as Elizabeth turned her head to watch them pass, that she noticed something. It was something to be seen out of the corner of her eye; there was a cloudiness about those figures. If she looked fully at them they seemed solid, _real_. She had also been afforded an even better chance to look at the figure she had first mistaken for her sister Jane and realized it was _not_ Jane.

There was some instinct inside that put a label on that face as _Grandmother Gardiner,_ her mother's mother. Her grandmother had been just as much of a renowned beauty in _her day_ as Jane was now, and as Mrs. Bennet was known to have been. Mrs. Gardiner had died in childbirth before she even saw her thirtieth birthday, that child having died with her. She left behind three little children without a mother. Her early death was likely the cause which Elizabeth thought contributed to her mother's nature being so fleeting and fickle. Elizabeth wondered if what she had just witnessed walking in the woods, were the figures of her departed grandmother and her now _departed_ mother.


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Elizabeth turned to follow the pair. It seemed as if all sound had stilled on that gray and blustery afternoon though there continued to be the sound of wind in the trees. But there were no signs or sounds of life (the chittering of squirrels or the calling of birds) as those two figures walked down a path in the woods, and as Elizabeth followed, her footsteps muffled.

It was cool as was found on an October afternoon, a chilliness driven into her by the wind as she watched two figures who appeared solid and real creatures though she knew were not. She could assuredly turn her head to the side, and when she did (looking out of the corner of her eye), they would become blurred and vapor-like.

Elizabeth wondered where they were going. Wondered where their journey would take them and how long she would be able to keep up, and follow behind them with darkness creeping around her. Would Elizabeth find she needed to turn around, but would those figures be able to carry on? She thought that the longer she followed them the more they seemed to be tracing a small footpath in the woods which marched beside the River Ver, but the more the path was becoming covered over with tree branches. In the darker lighting those figures gave off a slight glow as if they had an illumination within, one which shone out of them.

She continued on with soft footsteps in that gray wood. There had been that initial leap of joy that her mother had recovered, but when Elizabeth realized it could not be true, it was not despair which had taken hold, it was something else, not numbness, but astonishment which lit up inside her as she followed them.

There was a little bridge over the river up ahead, and the two figures walked without making any sound, close to the side of the river, and then made their way across the footbridge. They vanished from view. Elizabeth hurried to catch up. It was a small pedestrian footbridge with a knee-high railing; the river was not very wide or deep just there, and the bridge was for foot traffic, nothing more. But she could not see the two she had followed anymore. As she stood and stared, it looked like there was an archway over the bridge. Curiosity inspired her feet, and she stepped across its small width and over to the other side.

Elizabeth was suddenly struck by how much colder it was on the west side of the bridge, a stinging cold. She pulled her shawl a little more snugly up over her shoulders as she cocked her head to look at her surroundings as the landscape about her did not quite match what she was expecting.

The trees were in the places she envisioned, but other items were not. It was as though the bushes had moved or were nonexistent now. As though a logger had come in, gotten confused, and removed the undergrowth, and left the trees. Other than that, she could not quite voice what was _wrong_. Elizabeth turned to look back over her shoulder and noticed that slight archway over the bridge was more distinct on this side. There was a brighter light showing through from the east side illuminating the portal she had just passed through.

She finally realized what was bothering her, what was really _wrong_. There was no sound. There was dead silence all around. Even though it was cold (and colder here than it had been on the other side), it wasn't cold because the wind was blowing (there was no rustling in the trees)—there was no movement anywhere, no sound of life. There was not that hum that exists everywhere whenever you're outside. You hear it all around, that thrum even though you may claim it is silent outside; there is still an underlying quiver as though the earth is a single entity and its heart is always beating. We are always aware of it.

But she was no longer aware of any life here. Elizabeth turned around and noticed those two figures were far in the distance, walking away from her. The little pathway they were on wound its way back to Meryton proper. Part of her wondered if Grandmother Gardiner wasn't taking Mrs. Bennet _home_ somehow. Elizabeth felt like she was right in that sense. It was probably a quarter mile, a little more, from that little footbridge to the outskirts of Meryton.

She hurried a little to catch up, then walked behind those figures in this quiet place. It was piercing cold now, and felt like a winter's day though there was no snow on the ground as evidence that it was a different season. She wondered if she might catch a cold as she followed along behind her mother and her grandmother. The intensity of the chill slowed her feet as she walked. This was not her usual road to Meryton. Normally, she took the Hill River Road which ran from Longbourn past Lucas Lodge. Though sometimes she did take this one, the Old Waiting Road, to add some time to a walk before calling on her aunt or a friend in Meryton.

But walking had become a chore since crossing the footbridge. Elizabeth was dressed for an autumn afternoon, not for a frigid winter's day. She walked without seeing anyone else as they approached the town and the High Street.

Then a thought in her mind blossomed, and she realized that there were no other signs of people besides her two family members. Usually, though Meryton was a small village, it was bustling with people. But there was no one to be seen as they approached the High Street. The Three Blackbirds tavern sat, ironically, at the edge of the property where the church lay. There were often men in front. So long as the day was fair enough, men lingered before it. But there was no one. Elizabeth followed her ancestors as they passed that corner of the High Street and down, knowing for sure now, that they were going to Grandmother Gardiner's house.

Mrs. Bennet had always been embarrassed by the smallness and the meanness of the house where she had grown up. Her father had only been a country attorney, an occupation her brother-in-law performed now. Once her father had died, the house had been sold. Mrs. Bennet's brother had been just old enough to establish himself in business. It was a house which Mrs. Bennet did not wish to visit as she felt she would be stepping down in the world if she did. As Mrs. Bennet (Miss Gardiner that was) _she_ had stepped _up_ in the world. Her beautiful face had landed her one of the richest gentlemen in town: Mr. Bennet. She did not want to revisit the scenes of her childhood; she was not sentimental. She had shed a tear when the house was sold.

Elizabeth hung back a little, right at the edge of The Three Blackbirds, as she watched her mother and her grandmother approach the Gardiner's old residence. The door was open though it was not as if it was a regular door thrown open in welcome. The door was missing entirely, and there was a huge black void in its place instead. The two figures stopped in front of the house and that dark abyss.

She stood by the tavern; there was something menacing about that black void of a doorway. It was both enticing and disgusting. But something pulled at Elizabeth as she looked at it. It pulled at her and yet repelled her as she watched the two women turn to look at it.

As she had followed and watched them, she had not felt that they had spoken to one another. There had been that over-riding deadness and an absence of sound, but now the two turned to each other, embraced, and then appeared to be sharing confidences. There was no whisper of sound that wafted through the air back to Elizabeth, so she moved her feet, despite the ugliness of that door, to come closer that she could hear what they had to say.

She both hurried and dragged her feet though, as she approached that ancestral pair because that void terrified her. They definitely were speaking to one another. Grandmother Gardiner was doing the talking and her mother was listening for once, a rare event indeed.

Still, the words were not carried in the dead, dull air across to Elizabeth. Her deadened footsteps paced nearer, and she watched as the two embraced again. Mrs. Bennet stepped back and watched as Lavinia Gardiner turned and with eager footsteps walked up the two stone steps and into the Gardiner house, crossing through that void. She walked without any hesitation. It was not as if opening a door and being able to peek inside a room. There was no small crack that gave a glimpse as to what was there; she simply walked through and disappeared. It swallowed her up, absorbed her.

Elizabeth moved the final ten feet to stand next to her mother as they stood and stared wide-eyed at that abyss.

In synchronicity, they then turned to look at each other. Mrs. Bennet did not seem surprised to see her second daughter next to her. Elizabeth returned her mother's gaze though Mrs. Bennet's eyes had a glazed look to them. Elizabeth felt that she was seeing the mother that had been left lying in her sickbed in those chambers back at Longbourn, a frail thing who had been dosed with laudanum, confused. At Longbourn, she had not been conscious, but here she seemed barely conscious, disoriented, and not understanding where she was, or what was happening.

Elizabeth wanted to reach out to her mother. And though she had seen those two women embrace, she knew she would not be able to touch the figure in front of her. Though Mrs. Bennet looked solid (frail, but solid), she was not built in the same manner as Elizabeth. Mrs. Bennet was not flesh and blood. There was a slight sense that she was powered by light (or perhaps feelings). It was more pronounced now that they were _here_ , wherever _here_ was, this cold, dark, and silent place—beyond the footbridge.

Elizabeth felt it was not Heaven, was it a Purgatory of some sort where you waited before you moved on? Was that what Grandmother Gardiner had just done? Moved on to the next place after having waited for her daughter Frances? She did not know.

"Oh, Lizzy. I am…" stuttered Mrs. Bennet.

"Yes, Mamma," she answered. She wasn't quite sure what her mother was saying or what Elizabeth was agreeing with. She did not wish to confirm to her mother that she was _dead_. Perhaps her mother was simply wishing to say she was confused. _That_ she could agree with.

A hand came up to Mrs. Bennet's cap to right it, though it seemed to do no good, it was as if it were permanently stuck. As if a painter had taken her likeness with that cap askew, the sleeve of her gown hanging long over one hand and _that_ she could never right either. "I am…frightened Lizzy."

"I am frightened too, Mamma," said Elizabeth. "We are here together."

"I have had the strangest dream." Mrs. Bennet took a step and started to walk back towards the High Street. She seemed to have no purpose, no _conscious_ purpose of where she was going, her mother, and yet Elizabeth almost felt as if she saw a thread which was pulling Mrs. Bennet along.

"I am having the strangest dream," Mrs. Bennet repeated. "I do not often think of your grandmother. Grandmamma Gardiner. It is like I have just seen her now, Lizzy." They kept pace together. "It is cold, Lizzy."

"It _is_ cold, Mamma," agreed Elizabeth.

"I forgot how pretty she was. Jane looks so much like her. I always thought Jane had her beauty from me, but truly she looks exactly, almost _exactly_ like my mother, Lizzy. It is most unfair." Mrs. Bennet sounded almost like her old self with this speech.

They walked by The Three Blackbirds and back up the Old Waiting Road.

"She told me that she had been waiting for me," explained Mrs. Bennet.

"Did she Mamma?" asked Elizabeth.

"Yes. She's been waiting for me all these years." The confusion lessened, and her voice sounded clearer.

"What does that mean Mamma?" prompted her daughter.

"I am so cold, Lizzy. I am confused, and I don't understand. Why am I here? And it's dark! Where is everyone. Why is it only you? I am not supposed to escort _you_. She explained _that_. "

"Escort me?" asked Lizzy.

"Yes. Mamma escorted _me_. And then I am to wait, and then I am to escort…" Mrs. Bennet cut off mid-sentence and looked at Elizabeth. "I think I should not tell." Elizabeth could hear how scared her mother was then as the disorientation returned.

"I think you should not tell either, Mamma." Elizabeth's insides twisted in a knot at all of this.

They had just left the last of the houses in Meryton behind as they headed towards that small footbridge that crossed the River Ver.

"But I have to get back, don't you see?" insisted Mrs. Bennet.

Elizabeth looked again and saw how frail, small, and wizened her mother looked. She had aged, and the walk seemed to be weighing on her as if pushing down, a great burden bending her over as if a much older woman. Yet there still seemed to her an idea that there was a thread pulling Mrs. Bennet along, pulling her mother back towards Longbourn. Elizabeth felt (it wasn't a place for _thinking_ it was a place for _feeling_ ), she _felt_ the dead must somehow need to linger near the place they died.

Grandmother Gardiner had died at home in bed. Hence they, her mother and grandmother, had traveled from Longbourn to Meryton to her old house to see Grandmother Gardiner off through that void. But now her mother needed to travel back to Longbourn because that was where _she_ had passed on.

That nameless footbridge came into view, and there was that slightly shimmering arch over it. Elizabeth could look east and see the welcoming twilight of her home country, of her _reality_ , beckoning her. She wondered if she would not be able to see or speak to her mother once she crossed the footbridge.

"Mamma," she called. Mrs. Bennet did not answer; she kept trudging along, that rope, whatever tied her, kept pulling her back to Longbourn. It surely did its job. "I love you, Mamma," said Elizabeth with her voice breaking a little at the end.

"Thank you, Lizzy," said her mother, who did not seem to be a being of emotion or feelings, but still was one as though a laudanum-induced creature, confused, stupid, and intent only on her task.

Elizabeth wondered if this was to be the last memory of her mother. Though as she would later consider it, it was better than the creature who laid in a stupor for three days in her bed, insensate and unresponsive, or that waxy and gray figure that would lie in a coffin in state in the best Longbourn drawing room.

Elizabeth slowed her footsteps as she neared the bridge, but Mrs. Bennet kept trudging on. Elizabeth stopped, a mixture of emotions, not wishing to say a permanent farewell to her mother as she felt for certain that she would not see Mrs. Bennet on the other side of the bridge. Yet it was so cold now that she felt she could not draw breath as she pulled her shawl up over her head. Her shawl did little to stave off the biting cold, her short coat felt but a thing of gauze, and that archway beckoned: a thing of light and relief.

Frances Bennet continued her pace up to the bridge, stepped across the river, and disappeared from her daughter Elizabeth's view once her feet touched the other side.

Elizabeth ran then, up the path, across the footbridge, and into the light and warmth of the east side. She felt as if it was balmy and warm after her experiences on the other side, and she pulled her shawl back down off of her head. She could feel her skin warm. It was twilight, the sky darkening quickly as it did, almost as if the sun were running away. She thought about the image of the Roman god Apollo in his chariot riding away with the sun, and of his sister Diana bringing forth the moon as she paused to look up at the sky above.

The pathway back towards Longbourn was empty. Mrs. Bennet did not walk in front of her with that slow and deliberate pace she had shown on the other side. Elizabeth squinted as though that might help her to discern a slightly shimmery and glowing figure, but there was no one. She set to, walking quickly to march back to Longbourn.

The enormity of what had passed engulfed her mind, but it did not overwhelm her. Such an experience was something that needed to be considered thoroughly, but was not something to be shared quickly. The household would have other considerations, another focus besides listening to Elizabeth speak of what she saw and experienced in the Hollybush Woods that day.

Mrs. Bennet had lingered for three days after her fall in the graveyard before she finally succumbed to apoplexy. She left behind five grieving daughters, and a slightly distraught husband right at the start of autumn. Daughters who were right at the brink of womanhood. Elizabeth had been eighteen years old when her mother passed over.


	4. Chapter 4

Readers: I pulled this for publication, but have not sent to my distributor yet. I got interrupted as I was called to do another tour up in Paradise to help sift ashes. I have a final read-through to do before I send it to out. I may be too tired to focus on it today, but given I have a new distributor I'd say it won't be available until Christmas Day. It's going to be published on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and Indie Books.


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